Geneticist Cynthia Kenyon is heading to Google

Calico project to prolong life lures UCSF professor

Updated 10:42 am, Sunday, April 20, 2014

kenyon010_mk.jpg
Cynthia Kenyon at UCSF Mission Bay campus has found a way to increase the lifespan of microscopic worms by suppressing a single gene.
4/21/05
Mike Kepka / The Chronicle

kenyon010_mk.jpg
Cynthia Kenyon at UCSF Mission Bay campus has found a way to increase the lifespan of microscopic worms by suppressing a single gene.
4/21/05
Mike Kepka / The Chronicle

Photo: Mike Kepka, SFC

Image 2 of 2

kenyon170_mk.jpg
Cynthia Kenyon at UCSF Mission Bay campus has found a way to increase the lifespan of microscopic worms by suppressing a single gene.
4/21/05
Mike Kepka / The Chronicle

kenyon170_mk.jpg
Cynthia Kenyon at UCSF Mission Bay campus has found a way to increase the lifespan of microscopic worms by suppressing a single gene.
4/21/05
Mike Kepka / The Chronicle

Photo: Mike Kepka, SFC

Geneticist Cynthia Kenyon is heading to Google

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Google's mysterious health venture dedicated to extending human life has quietly lured a prominent scientist away from UCSF, The Chronicle has learned.

The university confirmed that Cynthia Kenyon, a biochemistry and biophysics professor acclaimed for her discoveries about the genetics of aging, left UCSF this month to join Calico, Google's nascent biotechnology company. She had served as a part-time adviser to Calico since November.

Google has revealed little about Calico since the search giant formed the independent company in September, except that it wants to slow aging and fight age-related diseases. As Google CEO Larry Page once put it, Calico is truly a "moon shot."

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Kenyon, a global pioneer in aging research since the 1990s, joins a roster of A-list scientists led by Chief Executive Officer Arthur Levinson, who also chairs the boards of Genentech and Apple.

Google "really wants to pull together initially a very small group of people who have worldwide reputations," said George Geis, an adjunct professor who specializes in technology mergers and acquisitions at UCLA's Anderson School of Management. "Cynthia clearly does."

Kenyon, who will remain affiliated with UCSF as an emeritus professor, said she is excited to join Calico but declined to offer specifics. "Calico is still sorting out directions and priorities and is not yet in a position to be talking about itself," she said in an e-mail.

Clues to ambitions

She began studying aging in the 1980s, but had trouble finding anyone who shared her enthusiasm for the notoriously difficult field. The scientific community suddenly became a lot more interested in 1993, when Kenyon and her team discovered that partially disabling a single gene - called daf-2 - doubled the life span of roundworms.

The idea that humans could scientifically control aging was an unexpected breakthrough. The research paved the way for other experiments that demonstrated fruit flies and mice can also live longer because of the mutation. Humans who live to 100 are more likely to have mutations in the daf-2 gene, too.

Kenyon's work suggests that drugs targeting this pathway could treat maladies of aging such as Alzheimer's and some cancers.

"Age is the single largest risk factor for an enormous number of diseases," she explained to The Chronicle in 2005. "So if you can essentially postpone aging, then you can have beneficial effects on a whole wide range of disease."

In interviews and speeches, Kenyon comes across as approachable, energetic and, yes, far younger than her 60 years. So deep is her dedication that she avoids bread and sugar - except dark chocolate - because studies show they speed up aging.

"We are trying to find drugs that people could take to make them disease-resistant, more youthful and healthy," Kenyon told the Observer last year. "Eventually we will find them.

"Just living longer and being sick is the worst," she continued. "But the idea that you could have fewer diseases, and just have a healthy life and then turn out the lights, that's a good vision to have. And I think what we know about some of these pathways suggests that might be possible."

'Fountain of youth'

In 1999, Kenyon co-founded a Boston company working on treatments for metabolic diseases based on aging mechanisms - a "fountain of youth" drug. Appropriately named Elixir Pharmaceuticals, the company initially raised $36.5 million in venture capital.

A decade later, Elixir was close to signing a $500 million deal that would have allowed drug giant Novartis to either exclusively license worldwide rights to Elixir's diabetes program or acquire the company outright.

But that deal appears to have fallen through. The next year, the company licensed a potential therapy for Huntington's disease to Siena Biotech in Italy. Elixir, however, shut down sometime after 2010, documents show.

Still, Kenyon appears ready to give the industry another try.

"Cynthia's courage to follow her vision and plow ahead into un-chartered territory is the definition of being a leader in science," Kaveh Ashrafi, a UCSF associate professor of physiology who also studies roundworm biology, said in an e-mail.

In November, Calico hired Dr. Hal Barron as president of research and development. He had previously led global product development at pharmaceutical giant Roche. The company's chief scientific officer is David Botstein, who was a noted geneticist at Princeton University. And Dr. Robert Cohen, who is overseeing research and development and business development, comes from Genentech, where he helped bring several cancer drugs to market.

Among them, Kenyon demonstrates the strongest expertise in aging.

"To me," she once wrote, "it seems possible that a fountain of youth, made of molecules and not simply dreams, will someday be a reality."

This article has been corrected since it appeared in print editions.

Cynthia Kenyon

Age: 60

Breakthrough research: Discovered key genes involved in the regulation of aging in roundworms, a pathway that has since also been found in other organisms, including mammals.

Work: Joined UCSF in 1986. Latest role was American Cancer Society Professor in the biochemistry and biophysics department, and director of the Larry L. Hillblom Center for the Biology of Aging.

Education: Valedictorian in chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Georgia (1976), doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1981)

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